


a sliver to call mine

by singmyheart



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, F/F, F/M, Hotel Sex, Post-Reynolds Pamphlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 04:21:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9303923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singmyheart/pseuds/singmyheart
Summary: The couch he’d put in his study was leather, black and boxy and uncomfortable. She was sure it was hell to sleep on, but he had been, for months now, and she heard him up nights, tossing and turning on the other side of the wall. Almost told him to come back to bed half a dozen times.





	

**Author's Note:**

> my faces for [James Reynolds](http://getrafael.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/rafael-limp-headshot.jpg), [John Church](http://hdcontent.affino.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/265/JohnCho_2_MDisplay_1883.jpg), and [Catherine](http://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2016/02/14/6359101444319057101656046280_14davis1-master675-v2.jpg) and [Philip Schuyler](http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1239382/images/o-GIANCARLO-ESPOSITO-facebook.jpg), just for reference (Rafael Casal, John Cho, Viola Davis and Giancarlo Esposito, respectively, if those pictures don't load. just think of the latter two aged up 10-15 years, shhh).

 

 

 

 

 

Alexander had complained when they’d bought it that the bed was too big. For a while, Eliza had assumed he was just unused to the luxury of space, having spent the preceding years on twins, doubles, cheap futons. These days, though, she thought she could see what he meant. It had seemed no bigger than any ordinary bed, before - Before - but now it was an ocean. A vast expanse she couldn’t fill if she tried. And she had tried, slept on his side now and again, but it never worked: only made her more aware of it, of the negative space usually occupied by his restless body. He would turn over in the night and reach for her, pull her to him in the twilight between asleep and awake. An arm over her waist, long hair spilled like ink over the pillows in the dark. Never quite snored but there was a little catch in his breathing. He talked in his sleep, sometimes, disjointed muttering. Kept a notebook on the bedside table that he’d scrawl in with his eyes still half-shut. It was still there, almost filled with his sprawling, near-illegible streams of consciousness.

The couch he’d put in his study was leather, black and boxy and uncomfortable. She was sure it was hell to sleep on, but he had been, for months now, and if he had complaints he didn’t voice them to her. As long as she’d known him he’d been plagued by spells of back pain, ever-present tension in his neck and shoulders - she was feeling shades of it, now, too, sleepless night after sleepless night. Wondered if his was worse, how many mornings in these last few months he’d woken up to those sharp, shooting pains without her there to comfort him. She heard him up nights, tossing and turning on the other side of the wall. Almost told him to come back to bed half a dozen times.

 

 

*

 

 

In most respects, Thanksgiving at Gil and Adrienne’s was the same as it ever was, wine and good food and better conversation. Alex always got uncomfortable around the holidays, some fraction of him always the orphan out of place, which was in no small part the reason he had clung so hard to Gil, and to Hercules - and to Jack, she thought with a pang. Found family. But he could usually pull through it at least for this one evening - Alex, with his storms and his endless hunger, could get stoic on rare occasions.

He was, also, fucking _loud._ Had he always been so loud? Was it just the drinking? He was at the other end of the table and he was all Eliza could hear, always the hardest to ignore despite the dozen other people in the room. She wondered how Gil could even bear sitting next to him; god, he was obnoxious sometimes. Most times.

Her phone vibrated twice, three times in succession; she caught it before it rattled clear off the table. “My sister,” she muttered after a glance at the screen, in response to Adrienne’s questioning look. Swallowed the knot in her throat.

Somewhere between dinner and dessert someone brought up Jack, like someone always did, and the stories spun out. She’d heard them all before and was comforted by their familiarity: the time he’d set himself on fire trying to light a cigarette in the wind, any number of nights involving fights with strangers and frankly stupid quantities of alcohol. A little rose-coloured, maybe, all the reckless danger of youth made funny by grief and the passage of time.

Gil was as loose and relaxed as the rest of them, and leaning hard on Alex’s shoulder when he asked, “D’you still have the hat?”

Alex stared at him for a second, brow knit, and then the memory dawned and his face broke open in a laugh. “Holy shit, I do - I can’t believe I forgot about that…”

“I don’t know this story,” Adrienne said, bemused, looked from one of them to the other.

Alex turned just a fraction more in her direction, leaning forward; Eliza might not have noticed that a few months ago. Tucked a lock of hair behind his ear. “He’d just broken up with this guy, right,” he explained, “and fucked off to Atlantic City - without telling any of us, mind you. Just went on a bender and got himself thrown in the drunk tank - calls me the next day like,” and here he affected a passable imitation of Jack’s Carolina drawl, “well, I’m in fucking Jersey and Daddy’s threatening to cut me off, again -”

“Stop -”

“Swear to god. I guess he hitched most of the way home, no money ‘cause he’d blown through some _stupid_ amount of cash just being a fuckin’ idiot -”

“And he got home,” Gil put in, a little choked with laughter, “came in the door with his shirt on inside-out -”

“- and this fuckin’ _hat,_ he gives me, cost more than the car I had at the time -”

“- and he says, ‘we are not talking about this, ever,’ goes into his room and sleeps for two days. Never said another word about it.”

Alex broke off into laughter, lay a hand across his chest and howled. Hercules picked up the thread of it and he and Gil were off and running into yet another anecdote, and another; by the time they finally exhausted themselves Alex’s eyes were brimming with tears, but they were bittersweet ones. “Here’s to Jack,” Adrienne said, quietly, and raised her glass. The murmur went around the room, _to Jack,_ and they drank. Alex, wet-eyed and flushed from the drink and the heat of the room, was looking at Eliza when he said it.

After all of it, the winding-down of the evening, dishes cleared and nightcaps drunk and goodbyes dispensed with, they walked home, the night cold but clear. He offered her his arm and it was almost like it had been, Before.

The apartment was too warm when they got in, and quiet, almost like her footsteps were muffled on the carpet. The quiet had settled in over the last couple of months like a rude houseguest, like a physical thing. It had weighed on her, rounded her shoulders and locked her jaw; she could have lost her voice. Swallowed all the things she hadn’t been saying, pushed it all down.

“I'm gonna have a glass of wine,” she ventured, in the kitchen. Tried not to watch him watching her while she shed her scarf and sweater. “You want one?” He nodded, accepted the glass she poured him with a murmured _thanks._ All at once she was reminded of their first couple of dates, so long ago; nervous and wanting him to like her and childishly a little gratified that he seemed to want her to like him even more. But she wasn't standing here in her camisole floundering for something to say to the cute guy she'd met in the bar - this was Alex, her Alex. A stranger to her now, in a lot of ways, but also every bit as infuriating and arrogant and brilliant as he had always been. The quiet stretched on, interminable, and she wanted to scream, was so sick of quiet - and Alex was still in arm's reach, so -

He leaned in for her and she knew she couldn't bear it if he kissed her right now, she'd crumble. Maybe he caught that, read her mind, because he brushed her hair back and kissed not her lips but her neck, the edge of her jaw. Smallest brush of teeth on her earlobe, _fuck,_ and encouraged by her sigh he wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and pulled her toward him, toward his awful gorgeous mouth. Reached to set his glass down on the island behind her and so did she; one of them tipped. She didn't care. Both his hands on her now and she clutched at him too, his arms, his back. His mouth warm and wet and open against her neck, so familiar and so able to just take her the fuck apart even still, even after everything. It had been months since he'd so much as held her hand, autumn come and nearly gone and she was _drowning_ now. He moved, downward, scraped his teeth over her throat hard enough to make her flinch and kept going; pushed blunt nails down her back and tugged her shirt out of his way to take her nipple in his mouth. That dragged a cry out of her, one ugly and desperate, and she wound her fingers in his hair to hold him there. He kept at her, almost gentle, delicate, until her knees wanted to buckle but he was here and _god,_ she'd forgotten what it was like to have him hold her up. This was a bad idea, they shouldn't have been doing this.

Alex picked her up, got his hands underneath her ass and lifted, set her on the island. She registered too late the spreading puddle of cabernet on the granite, but - fuck it, she thought, savagely. Ruin her clothes, make her regret this more than she already did. He kissed her, ravenous, bruising, said her name in the awed, wrecked way he always did - the way he'd used to -

And that stopped her in her tracks. She wrenched free of it, the wave of selfish, white-hot want, broke the surface of it gasping and pushed him off of her. Hard enough that he stumbled back a step.

They looked at each other a moment, panting. Eliza almost, almost pulled him back to her - wanted so badly for him to just fuck her and let it all go for a while, leave it for her future self to regret. Wanted it, him, so badly her palms itched.

“I - we shouldn't,” she got out, with an effort. She braced herself for it, the question, _why shouldn't we,_ the argument - the fight they should have had weeks ago instead of all this fucking oppressive, loaded silence - but nothing. Alex sighed, deep, but didn't argue; scrubbed a hand over his face. He looked very tired, suddenly. She stood on shaky legs and brushed past him, left him standing there.

In the bedroom she left her wine-stained clothes in a pile and got into bed. Only when she stopped hearing Alex moving around did she check her phone, tuck herself under the covers to read the texts she'd gotten earlier. A string of mild filth of the usual tenor and then the last, twenty minutes or so after the preceding ones: _you're with him aren't you_

 _yes… ?_ she texted back. _I was at dinner. It is Thanksgiving you know_

_don't be a bitch. tuesday?_

_tuesday_

 

 

*

 

 

_it's not like i cant recognize a cliche when i see one. fuck the first twenty yr old in a tight dress who looks my way, and what for? because she needed help, needed someone? thought i was smart? looked at me in a way my wife hasn't done in years? maybe it doesnt matter. maybe it really does. FUCK. i don't know._

 

 

*

 

 

Maria came out of the mildewed bathroom looking distastefully at her feet. “That shower’s disgusting,” she murmured, “I feel dirtier than I did before.”

“Wear flip-flops next time,” Eliza said, mildly, and knew a brief flicker of discomfort: all the hotels in this city and Maria wouldn't let her pay for anything nicer. The couple of times she had tried to bring it up had only caused arguments, so she let this one go. Maria seemed unruffled, in any case, just got back into bed without bothering to get dressed, ignored Eliza’s discontented noise when her hair soaked the pillows. Lay on her back and looked at the water-stained ceiling.

They hadn't been at this long enough for Eliza to have quite shaken the petty, adolescent envy that just looking at Maria brought up sometimes. She was beautiful, of course she was, in a way that could hurt to look at; even aside from that, perversely, Eliza could see exactly what had drawn Alex to her in the first place. Maria caught her staring and smirked but didn't push it.

“Next week?” Maria ventured into the quiet, broken only by the angry rattle of the bathroom fan. “The - what, twenty-third?”

“Can't,” Eliza said automatically, “we'll be in Albany.” She rolled over, dropped a kiss on Maria’s damp shoulder, inhaled the fake-citrus scent of hotel soap. “Schuyler family Christmas, you know. Four days at my parents’, it's a whole thing.” She sighed; just the prospect exhausted her.

Maria craned a little to look down at her. “Yeah, sounds terrible.”

“It is,” she insisted, bristling without really knowing why. “It will be, you don't know what they're like, okay, it's - tiring -”

“You don't need to convince me,” Maria pointed out, sounding almost bored.

“I mean, it seems like I do -”

“Eliza,” Maria cut her off, “I just meant…” And she faltered a little. “I don't know, it just - doesn't seem that bad, to me.” She shook her head, sat up and started hunting for her clothes. “Whatever, never mind.”

“Hey,” Eliza said, soft, caught her wrist and Maria turned back toward her, a little. She felt kind of unbalanced, was the truth, not just embarrassment prickling up her spine but something else, too - they didn't talk, really. Didn't offer this kind of information. “Not next week, then. Week after?” Maria sighed, which wasn't a no, let Eliza pull her once more into the nest of scratchy, bleach-smelling sheets, stretch out against her back.

“I gotta go,” Maria protested, weakly, huffed a laugh when Eliza reached down to skim across her cunt, still wet, and sensitive too judging by her ragged gasp.

“Mhmm,” Eliza muttered and sucked gently on the skin where neck met shoulder, the spot she'd found took Maria to pieces every time. Skated a fingertip over her clit just lightly and Maria breathed out a curse, a quiet but vehement _fuck._ The knowledge that Alex had been here, done this exact thing - it was never far from her mind, here, and it chafed but she pushed it out. Not now.

She went home later with the scent of Maria’s arousal clinging thick to her fingertips.

 

 

*

 

 

“You're still up?”

She turned to see Church, who looked as weary as she felt; disheveled from the day, remains of a nightcap in his hand. “And here I thought I was brooding alone, damn,” she murmured and he chuckled, crossed the room to her.

Christmas Eve, and it was late, everyone else in bed. The only light in the cavernous living room coming from the Christmas tree. “You're brooding,” he said, barest hint of inflection at the end to make it a question.  

It had been a long, long day. The usual chaos of a Schuyler family gathering, this year with a few additional factors: Angelica had announced over dinner that she and Church were moving back to New York come spring, something about his job (he'd told Eliza a million times what he did for a living, but it always seemed to go in one ear and out the other). The warm reception of this news had served to soften the collective frostiness toward Alex at least a little; the whole family was a touch cooler with him now, which she might have expected. It was making him tense in turn; he and Peggy had had a decidedly competitive game of pool earlier that skirted the edge of personal very quickly, though it was so artfully passive-aggressive that anyone who didn't know them both so well could've missed it. Angelica was the only one, so far, who was refusing to hide it; she’d greeted him coolly and then proceeded to more or less ignore him. Eliza figured this was an attempt to cover up her own hurt, make clear to Alex how much what had happened was unsettling the strangely tight-knit and indefinable friendship they'd always had. Church, with whom Alex had always gotten along well, seemed remarkably unbothered to be caught in the middle, but then Church was unbothered by most things.

“The holidays always make me… evaluate, you know,” she mused, saw Church nod in her periphery. “Got a lot to wade through, this year.”

“Bit of an understatement,” he offered mildly.  They didn't need to whisper, strictly speaking, but to do otherwise would have been to upset the stillness blanketing everything, the sated kind of quiet that had settled over the house.

“Did you read it?” she asked him, a little plaintively, felt very suddenly like she needed to know. Looked over at him and he was confused for all of a moment before he realized what she was referring to.

“The - oh. Well. Which answer do you want to hear?”

“The honest one, Church.”

He seemed to be considering what to say, and then he cleared his throat and she knew. “I read it, yeah. And Angelica - she read it several times, actually. Took a few to make sense of it all, if I’m honest.” He seemed to sense that she was waiting for an elaboration, and added, “It's a hell of a story, I'll give him that.”

That surprised her into a laugh. “Isn't it, though.” A beat. “Do you ever...” and she stopped, rephrased. “You don't worry about Angelica.”

“I wouldn’t say that, no,” he allowed, cautiously, after a moment. She flickered uncertainty for a second - maybe she shouldn’t have been having this conversation with her brother-in-law. But she’d always liked Church, trusted him, always felt they had a lot in common: both a little reserved, often polite to a fault. Both of them had married brash, flirty, mercurial geniuses (Angelica and Alex had a lot in common, too). “But - everything else aside for a moment, monogamy’s not easy. You don’t need me to tell you that, surely.”

“I keep trying to retrofit. You know? Just combing back through the years looking for some kind of indication that he’d - that this would happen. Something to point to and say, there. That’s when I should have known.”

“Drive yourself crazy that way,” he pointed out. When she glanced over at him he was chewing his lip, contemplating. She wondered whether he was wrestling with the same things she was, mulling over fidelity and self-sabotage and the savior complex in front of her parents’ Christmas tree. With its popcorn garland and carefully preserved ornaments she and Peggy and Angelica had made as kids, it was a monument to times that felt almost further away than she could stand. “I don’t want to say - just stop that, as if it’s easy. But you’ll only torture yourself, you know that. And it isn’t exactly fair to him, either.”

“Fair to him,” she murmured, but Church only made a quiet noise of assent.

“It’s late,” he said, following another minute or two of companionable silence. She liked that about him, too, that he didn’t feel the need to fill every minute with talk. “Time for bed, I think.”

“Night, John,” and she went up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Eliza.”

Upstairs, in her childhood bedroom, she undressed quietly, tried her best to crawl into bed without disturbing Alex, but he was awake enough to turn over and blink blearily at her. “Hey.” He flinched and huffed a laugh when she put her cold hands on his belly, but laced her fingers with his and held them there for a minute while she warmed up. She’d done it without thinking, the kind of casual touch she’d been missing for so long sleeping alone, but she was too tired to give it any more thought. They lay there for a while, nose to nose, until he craned a little to look over her shoulder. “It’s snowing.”

She turned over to watch it, back to his chest. Caught sight of his phone on the nightstand. “It’s after one,” she whispered, “Merry Christmas, Alex.”

“Merry Christmas, Bets.” He pressed up a little closer against her back and draped an arm over her waist, on autopilot.

The curtains were half-open; the sky outside the window had that strange, yellow quality that came with snow.

 

 

*

 

 

Like tonguing at a cut on the roof of her mouth, there were days she couldn’t help but torture herself, read the worst parts. Alex had long since deleted the infamous blog post, but it lived on in screenshots, had been mentioned in at least one late-night host’s monologue, cut up into a list by Buzzfeed, and spawned one particularly obnoxious thinkpiece about the nature of fame and art and the far-reaching consequences of straight male entitlement as bred by patriarchy. It was a long, awful spiral of contrition that, she’d later learned, he’d cranked out in ninety manic minutes fuelled by Five-Hour Energy and the fact that he hadn’t slept in a week. She had read it in its entirety once, and then again, before he took it down - this bleeding, rambling thing. Several thousand words’ worth of a confession that was by turns startlingly honest and oddly cagey, a wandering and digressive account of a reckless man driven to infidelity by the particular combination of selfishness, abandonment issues and good old-fashioned self-destructive tendencies. The comments were brutal, an ugly tangle of name-calling, huffy self-righteous calls to boycott Alex’s books, snide mentions of a prenup. Supposed friends of friends of friends speculating that Eliza had turned a blind eye to Alex’s long history of fucking around, that he’d gotten around his dorm hall back at Columbia, that Maria was a prostitute, that their marriage was sexless and miserable. _who even is this guy? who gives a shit? guy cheats on wife. water is wet._

To read it again brought up a gnawing ache, not the knife’s-edge pain it once had. The Alex who had written it, raw and frantic and prideful, seemed a world away from the distant and withdrawn one who’d taken his place. She didn't quite feel like the blameless innocent party this missive made her out to be, either, but someone altogether different. It almost seemed like something that had happened to someone else.

She'd been feeling restless all day, rootless and agitated for some reason she couldn't name, and reading it again only made it worse. With Alex’s words ringing in her head she texted Maria, and fifteen minutes later was on her way out the door.

“Where you going?” Alex asked, glanced up from his laptop.

She was surprised; he hadn’t asked her that in weeks. Maybe he felt he didn’t have a right to, anymore. “Out.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Uh, okay.”

“That alright with you?” It wasn't at all commensurate with the harmless question he'd asked but something in his tone got her back up.

“I was just asking, Eliza -”

“Well. Don’t.” That was harsh, not to mention childish, but fuck it, fine.

Alex looked for a second like he’d let it go, shaking his head, but then he said, “no, you know what,” almost to himself and looked back up at her. “We’re really gonna keep doing this?”

“Doing what,” she said, flat, as if she didn't know exactly what he meant.

“This - fucking -” He gestured helplessly into the space between them. “We’re roommates, Bets. I don’t know where you’re at, you’re always looking at me now like you don’t even know who I am - what do I have to do -”

“Christ, Alex, it’s not like you forgot our anniversary, you can’t just -”

“I don’t know what you _want_ from me,” he burst out, loud and sudden. He was on his feet, ran a hand through his hair, restless, tense.

She pushed back the instinctive little minnow of _man shouting_ fear and took a deep breath but her voice quavered anyway, small and pathetic. “I want this to never have happened.”

“I can’t give you that, baby,” he said, softened immediately. He’d told her that before, she wondered if he remembered.

“I want to have never heard the name Maria Reynolds,” and she stumbled a little on that one but hurtled onward. Realized all at once with an icy kind of clarity what her problem was: she didn't trust him anymore, and she could have laughed at the bitter irony of it. “I want to stop having fucking - dreams about you with her, I want you to never have aired our dirty laundry on your fucking _blog,_ of all things -”

“Something else,” Alex interrupted, throat thick. “Come on, Betsey, ask me for something else, anything else.” He crossed the room to her, dropped to his knees, dramatic as ever. Some things never changed.

“I want to hate you, sometimes,” she admitted, and it hurt coming out but it wasn’t a lie.

“That’s fair,” Alex muttered, almost inaudible, muffled against fabric where he’d pressed his cheek to her thigh. She carded a hand through his hair out of habit, watched the thick soft strands fall through her fingertips. Alex shifted, a little, reached to ruck the hem of her shirt up slowly, tentatively, waiting for her to stop him. She should stop him, she thought, but he was dropping these impossibly soft kisses across the skin just above the waistband of her tights and she was fighting a losing battle. “Just - let me,” he murmured, moved to drag his mouth over her cunt and she felt it tenfold even blunted as it was by two layers of fabric. And she wanted to, she _wanted:_ here, they’d always understood each other. It would be so easy to just let him, let him fuck her til she screamed and remind her what she’d been missing, what had always been good about the two of them. Forget about the hole in her chest, the raw inside-out ache she’d been carrying around. She let her eyes drift closed; Alex nosed her thighs a little further apart. He was talking, she realized; it took her a second to catch it: “god, miss you, miss this so much…” And she did hate him, for one awful second.

“Stop,” she choked out, “stop, get off me.”

Alex rocked back on his heels like she’d slapped him, looked up at her confused. “What?”

God, she wanted to cry. Pushed past him to pick up her jacket and bag instead, didn’t say another word. She didn’t hear him get up off the carpet before the door slammed behind her.

Maria had beat her to one of their usual places, was waiting for her in the parking lot looking bored. Eliza took the cigarette from her hand and tossed it to the pavement, stopped Maria’s indignant protest with a kiss. Hard and bruising and stupid, stupid not to even get into the room first. She didn’t care. Dimly she registered the painful-sounding scrape when Maria’s back hit the brick wall and almost apologized - but Maria didn’t give her the chance. On the same page, thank fucking god, she fisted both hands in the lapels of Eliza’s jacket and pulled and they stumbled back into the room, entangled.

They fell onto the hard, creaking mattress in a heap. Eliza got her teeth in Maria’s neck too hard to feel good, just to hurt - “what is your fucking _problem_ ,” Maria demanded, breathless, but didn’t shove her off, and when Eliza kissed her again she caught something like amusement in her eyes. Maria was smaller than she was but she had a surprising wiry strength Eliza lacked, and flipped them over. Eliza couldn’t keep still, hands everywhere, nails catching in the fabric of Maria’s shirt to drag hard down her back. Maria ground her hips down and cursed and it was too much and not enough, too much clothing and not enough friction. She didn’t know what to do with this, this agitation too big to contain, this feeling like her body had been cut up and sewn back together wrong. Heard a stitch rip when Maria yanked her clothes off only enough to get at her cunt, cool air of the room a shock on her feverish overheated skin.

She was begging before Maria even touched her, come on come on come _on,_ and kept it up even when the sudden stretch of Maria’s fingers in her and the grind of her palm against her clit edged into too much. Her climax rocked through her, sooner than she expected; it was ugly and it hurt and she only wanted more.

Maria barely gave her seconds to breathe, stripped her own jeans and came back up the bed to straddle Eliza’s shoulders, rock down against her mouth. This was good, perfect, exactly what she needed - nothing to think about but the press of Maria’s thighs around her neck and the heavy scent of her, taste cloyingly sweet. Everything else gone, driven out, Alex and Angelica and her own aimless desperation eclipsed by the now-familiar challenge of getting Maria to come. It didn’t always happen but Eliza would be damned if she’d let it go now, licked and sucked at her until Maria gave it up, came quiet but shuddering hard, a hand twisted painfully in Eliza’s hair to hold her there through it.

Maria got off of her and sprawled out, breathing ragged. “Not that I’m complaining,” she said, flat, “but what the fuck got into you.”

“I don’t...” Eliza started, and gave up. Her own heart felt like it was fixing to beat clear of her chest. She wasn’t sure she had the words for it - didn’t want to bring up Alex, here. He was always here, the elephant in the room, but to acknowledge that would have been to cross a line, the last in a number of lines they’d all already crossed. Let her have this, she thought, whatever fraction of this she could separate from him. So she didn’t answer Maria’s question, and Maria didn’t press her, because they didn’t do that. Didn’t talk, didn’t share.

Maria lit a cigarette, said something snide about the one Eliza had thrown away earlier. “Do you have to do that in here,” Eliza asked, resigned, and sighed. It was an old argument by now, not worth getting into. Maria at least turned to exhale in the vague direction of the window.

Alex was asleep on the couch when she got home, the living room dark but for the flickering light of the TV he’d left on. He’d been writing, his laptop sat open on the coffee table. She resisted the urge to snoop and instead carefully cleared away the detritus of his evening, the empty pizza box and a couple of crushed beer cans. He stirred when she came back to turn off the TV, reached for her without opening his eyes. “Baby?”

“Hey,” she whispered, squeezed his hand briefly. “Sorry - it’s late, go to bed.” He made a discontented noise and didn’t move.

She did mean to head straight into the shower and then to bed, but - the office door was open when she passed it. So she hovered in the doorway a moment and looked, not sure what she expected to find. She hadn’t set foot in this room since Alex had started sleeping here. The couch, with its blanket and pillow stacked neatly at one end. The rest of the room in counterpoint to that neatness, a couple days’ worth of clothes scattered over the floor, empty coffee mugs on the desk. The bookcase, disordered chaos, packed to bursting with books on everything from finance to a history of West Coast rap. Small grey remains of a joint in a glass on the windowsill; he’d smoked it recently judging by the smell, fading but still thick and poorly mitigated by floral air freshener. The painting she’d done for him last Christmas on the wall above the desk, the two of them on the beach somewhere in the south of France. Church had taken the photo she'd worked from, on the trip they’d all taken together a few years ago. She and Alex with their backs to the camera, holding hands; Alex turned slightly toward her, in profile, laughing at something she’d said. It had been too cold, really, to be on the beach; the bright yellow of her peacoat stood out against the muddy grey-blue-brown of the sand and sea before them. Both of them with long, dark hair tangled and unruly in the wind. The painting a little looser, a little brighter than the photo had been.

She took a long shower, hot enough to scald, water stinging harshly in the fresh scratches Maria had left down her back. Went to bed and didn’t sleep.

 

 

*

 

 

Spring crept in, wet and green and cold. Alex was properly in Writing Mode again, lost to the world; she would come home sometimes to find him pacing the living room dictating voice memos, which usually meant his hands had cramped badly enough to need a break. She had, once upon a time, offered to type for him when that happened; he rarely took her up on it but appreciated it nonetheless, would tell her so. She hadn’t offered in some time.

Church and Angelica came home, sometime in April. They hosted a dinner once they'd settled in and Eliza was concerned, given how they'd left things at Christmas - but Alex and Angelica were as cordial as they'd ever been. If Church had given their last conversation any more thought - Eliza certainly had - he didn't make it clear to her.

 

She had a lunch with Angelica that started off bad and got worse. She and Church were once again discussing finally having kids - “clock’s ticking” - and she'd just said something off-the-cuff and thoughtless about “having their own,” rather than fostering or adopting. Angelica seemed to realize immediately what she'd implied about her brother-in-law, didn't catch herself quick enough to head off the tense silence that had fallen.

“You know that’s not what I meant -”

“I know exactly what you meant, Ange.” The look on Angelica’s face meant she wasn't just going to apologize and move on and Eliza braced herself for it. Already knowing she wasn't going to go home to Alex and have him commiserate, bitch companionably about how her sister could be.

Angelica opened her mouth to speak, stopped. Tried again. “Fine. You want to have this out right now?”

Eliza was thrown. “What?”

“Liza. You’re miserable. You have been for months. You haven’t talked about it, have you?”

“No,” she admitted, after a moment; didn’t think this weird stalemate she and Alex had been in, tiptoeing, fighting around it, counted as talking about it. Her skin crawled at Angelica’s exasperated sigh.

“What are you gonna do, then?” And there was a little bit of a challenge in that. “Not just avoid him for the rest of your lives, surely?”

“Oh, just admit it, Ange,” she snapped, abruptly weary. “Just fucking tell me you think I’m handling this wrong -”

“Hold on,” Angelica interrupted, bristling, “I never said -”

“- because it’s not what you’d have done, I know -”

“- well, fuck, I’d have done _something_ , Eliza, more than this avoidant bullshit -”

“- I know! I know. If it had been Church, if he’d done this to you, you’d have left him. Or you think you would have.” Angelica looked indignant but Eliza hurtled on, voice rising; people were starting to turn. “Do you have - any fucking idea - you think I don’t know what this looks like? Like he’s every other guy fucking around on his frigid _bitch_ wife, nice girl but dumb - too stupid to just leave, or else too determined to piss off mom and dad -”

People were openly staring now; she didn’t give a fuck. What did it matter, it was all out there for public consumption anyway. Nothing her own anymore, let this just be more fuel for the fire, the spurned wife causing a scene in a crowded restaurant. Angelica’s eyes were hard in the way that meant she was really hurt and trying to hide it and Eliza felt a flicker of guilt, quickly squashed. She was so tired, tired of both Alex and Angelica and their shared need to turn a conversation into a debate at the slightest opportunity, the black-and-white thinking that left no room for nuance, the endless arguing. Maria’s name on the tip of her tongue but she bit it back, would not let herself imagine the look on her sister’s face. “I hope you never fucking do,” she said instead, hating the plaintive note in her voice, the angry tears pricking at her eyes to match Angelica’s. “I hope you never have to find out - if it were Church.” She was on her feet, barely hearing Angelica saying her name, her quiet protest, _Eliza, wait._ It was needlessly, ridiculously dramatic and she knew it but she turned and left and didn’t look back.

 

 

*

 

 

_come over_

Just those two words.

 _to your place?_ Eliza texted back, just to make sure she understood, and Maria texted back an address. Not far, but Eliza had enough time on the journey over to worry, to wonder if she should have done something, if Maria was alright. She’d never invited Eliza over and vice versa, one of many unspoken rules they’d had since all this had started.

The cab dropped her in front of Maria’s building and Eliza had an unsettling, momentary flash of recognition; she’d never been here but she recognized it. Grainy photos of Alex standing in this exact spot, looking drawn and tense and guilty as all hell. His shirt buttoned wrong, even, his wedding band visible from a distance. The photos were damning, had been posted on some blog coupled with the very beginnings of the speculation: _isn’t this Alex Hamilton? The writer?_

Maria greeted her at the door looking tired but otherwise fine. “Hey.”

“Is everything okay?” She hadn’t meant to lead with that and immediately wanted to backtrack - but. This. This wasn’t what they did; she felt wrong-footed.

Maria looked self-conscious for a moment, clearly as aware of the strangeness of the situation as Eliza was. She sighed. “I was just - climbing the walls, sitting here alone. Feeling weird. But if you want to give me a hard time about it you can leave -”

“No.” Eliza cut her off, tried to do so gently. “It’s not - it’s fine, I was just -”

“Wondering.”

“Concerned.”

“Do you want something?” Maria offered, after a moment. “Tea? Coffee?”

“Tea’s fine.” Maria busied herself in the kitchen for a few minutes, which gave Eliza the chance to get a look at the place. Small was her first impression, maybe half the size of her own apartment. A bookcase against one wall to rival Alex’s; one window not wide but with its curtains open to tempt the fading sun, plants on the sill. Shoes in a pile next to the door, boots that must have belonged to James, Maria’s flats. No art on the walls but for a huge length of batik fabric above the couch, loose, abstract florals in blues and purples. What must have been a wedding photo framed on the end table, Maria in a white sundress hanging off James’s skinny, tattooed arm. Eliza had only met him once or twice in passing and he looked exactly the same, just six or seven years younger, cigarette hanging from his mouth, dirty blonde hair in one eye. Something twisted in her chest and she looked away. Overall, she thought, the apartment had seen better days; it was a little shabby, organized but not overly so, and spotlessly clean.

Maria returned with cups of tea for them both, set them on the coffee table and curled up on the couch, not quite the opposite end from Eliza but not close enough to touch. “It’s hot,” she murmured as Eliza picked hers up, just wanting something to do with her hands. Took a sip and scalded herself for the trouble.

“Where is he?”

“Atlantic City. Friend’s wedding weekend. His friend, not mine,” Maria clarified, in response to Eliza’s questioning look. “You couldn’t have paid me to go.” A beat. “Where’s Alex?” His name sounded strange in her mouth, like a foreign language she couldn’t quite wrap her tongue around.

“He’s at home.” She was floundering. What were they doing, making small talk? Like this was a date, like they were friendly? She wondered if Maria and Alex had ever done this, ever _talked,_ whether it was ever anything of substance. “Does he know? James?”

“About you?” Not _us._ Maria looked a little surprised at the question, which was fair; Eliza was surprised she’d asked it. She pushed a hand through her hair, and Eliza watched her wedding ring glint in the dying evening light. “Maybe? Like - he and I have never - I think he knows there’s someone. Not you specifically.” Eliza braced herself for the _why,_ but it didn’t come. “Does Alex know?”

“Definitely not,” she said, a little too quickly. “I don’t think it would have even occurred to him as a possibility.” Maria’s mouth quirked but she didn’t say anything; Eliza went on. “I think - a lot of the time I don’t feel like the person other people think I am. Maybe that’s dramatic, but - like, Alex? Never in a million years would he expect - well.” She gestured vaguely so as to encompass both of them, all of this. There was a lot more she could have said, about her parents, about the adolescent kind of fear that still lingered when she went home - that she’d brought home the rough-edged charming whirlwind with no money or family to speak of just to piss off her parents and against all odds he’d stuck around. It wasn’t true, of course, but she was all too aware of what it looked like. “I don’t know, it’s stupid -”

“It’s not,” Maria said.

And Eliza wanted to argue, to point out that she knew herself better than Maria did, but - wasn’t that the whole point of her being here, that she didn’t have to? Maria had never asked for more than Eliza gave, and vice versa. She had thought, initially, that they had nothing in common besides Alex, besides the obvious, and to be free of expectations, the weight of who everyone else wanted her to be - it had been appealing, once. To realize all at once that she _cared_ about the woman sitting across from her, about what she thought, it was jarring. Eliza saw, here in this tiny apartment with its uncomfortable couch and its fractured marriage, the sliding doors of her life: behind the first, what she had been looking for with Maria in the first place. A clumsy kiss in a bar all those months ago, wounds fresh and raw and some half-baked concept of settling the score. Remembered thinking so clearly that Alex didn’t have a monopoly on stupid, selfish behavior. A conversation in which nothing had been said outright, neither of them using his name, but that had still been startlingly, recklessly honest. She had kissed Maria then, hard, and Maria had borne it; letting her get it out of her system, maybe. Pulled back, blood rushing in her ears, palms sweat-slick, and then Maria had reached for her and caught her mouth again. She had been sure then that it was what she needed, the rush of something that hurt, something self-destructive - had thought she might feel some sense of satisfaction afterward. Some sense of the scales balanced, the world set to rights after Alex had imploded it. It had never come, and she wondered when she had stopped waiting for it to happen.

The second door slid back and she saw her life as it was: a messy affair with a woman she should have hated; these brief stolen hours a reprieve from all of the heavy, sometimes days-long silences at home. Alex, to whose will language had always bent so beautifully, who had always been incapable of staying quiet when he should have. What exactly this all looked like to the world outside it.

So she moved forward now and kissed Maria again, who looked a little confused but acquiesced easily enough. She was desperate suddenly to get back on familiar ground, wash out the horrible vulnerable feeling of having shown her hand, having said too much. Maria didn’t stop her, instead pulled her to her feet; she nudged the coffee table and heard one of the mugs tip but Maria only laughed, said “don’t worry about it, I’ll get it later,” kissed her again. Searing, ravenous. Caught her around the waist and walked her back. Disoriented in unfamiliar surroundings and distracted as she was by the warm insistent press of Maria’s body against hers Eliza almost didn’t realize they were in the bedroom until she hit the mattress.

There was no hesitance now in the paths Maria’s hands and mouth were tracing, all these months later. Her teeth in Eliza’s neck, fingers making quick work of her buttons and zippers, and then her own. Neither rushed nor teasing but steady and sure. Maria’s mouth on her neck, chest, the little tattoo on her hip, and lower. It was like all the parts of her Maria was touching were somehow more alive than the rest, nails just barely dug into her thighs, little teasing flicks of her tongue. Her orgasm crept up on her suddenly, almost surprising, and washed over her hot and diffuse, consuming, a sunlit sea. The aftershocks had barely faded before she was pulling Maria up to kiss her, lick her own taste from her mouth. Maria pushed into the slick slide of Eliza’s fingers on her clit almost immediately, came hard a few minutes later clinging to her neck and still, still kissing her. Both of their faces wet with some obscene mix of Eliza’s own arousal and Maria’s lipstick, lips bitten and tingling.

There was always a moment, in the aftermath, where she couldn’t help thinking of Alex, comparing them. Maria seemed to always get a little prickly after sex for reasons Eliza had never quite managed to parse; Eliza wondered if she’d ever let Alex hold her. It was kind of morbid, this line of thought, and it never made her feel any better or any worse, exactly, it was just a fact. They lay there for a time, close but not quite touching.

The bedroom, now that she was looking at it, looked exactly like the rest of the apartment; cluttered but clean. Sheets mismatched, an acoustic guitar leaning against the far wall, a mirror on the back of the door with a spiderweb of cracks in one corner. Maria said something about the bathroom and went; Eliza watched her naked back retreat, appreciatively. Dug a cigarette out the pack on the nightstand and lit it, realized too late they weren’t Maria’s brand. Might not have been James’s, either. Whatever. The stack of books next to the lamp proved to be hard science texts that after only a page or two were completely beyond her understanding, and a course catalog, community college, next winter semester. Well.

“Make yourself at home, why don’t you,” Maria said, wry, and laughed when Eliza jumped, startled.

“Shit, sorry - I shouldn’t have, I was -”

“Shut up.” Maria was unruffled, got back in bed.

“Are you going back to school?”

“Just thinking about it. No firm plans. And - well, not going back, I never went to begin with.”

“This looks like plans,” Eliza pointed out.

“I don’t know, I’m not married to it - I shouldn’t even have left that out, if James sees -” She sighed, in response to Eliza’s look. “It’s just not an argument I’m prepared to have.”

“You don’t think he’d want you to - do what you want?” The look Maria gave her was answer enough, but she was curious now. “What would you want to study?”  

“Biology, probably? Biochemistry?” She looked tense enough that Eliza almost dropped it but she explained anyway, though it sounded like pulling teeth. “I was always good at it, in school, math, too, but… I met him when I was seventeen, and I guess I decided - or we both did, he did, whatever - that there were… more important things than AP exams. And then I just… never had the time, or the inclination, and he isn’t - oh my god, shut up -” Eliza had said her name, reached for her without quite knowing what she was trying to do, or say.

“I think you should do it,” she said, firmly.

“Look, I know it seems really straightforward to you -”

“Whether you do it or not - I think you should. I think you could.”

The look on Maria’s face at that made Eliza wonder how long it had been since anyone had told her something like that. It occurred to her, in a moment of stark and golden certainty, that she wasn’t the only one who had expectations on her mind.

 

  

When she got home she took a moment to consider her own apartment as Maria might have seen it: her own paintings on the walls, a hobby-turned-occasional-job for a woman who’d never had to work (she worried, occasionally, that she had latched on to painting not as something she was actually good at and liked but just as something to fill her days). Its neatness more than care but sterility wrought by anxiety or boredom or both. She had worked to make the open-concept living room and kitchen welcoming and warm but it struck her now as spare, yawning empty space much more than enough for a married couple without kids or the desire for them. Style without substance. _Here’s to the ladies who lunch, everybody laugh._ That discomfort twisted in her chest again and she swallowed it, put Maria out of her mind. She’d long since learned to compartmentalize; Maria didn’t belong here.

Alex had been writing when she’d left, so she anticipated being left to her own devices. Maybe she’d take a bath, ease the post-multiple-orgasms ache out of her limbs. But she could smell it coming down the hall, and there was a blanket tucked underneath the office door, so - she knocked, unsure if Alex would hear her over his music playing. But he called “hey” and hacked a cough.

At least he had the window open, was curled up in another blanket on the couch. “Wish you wouldn’t do that in here,” she said, but held out a hand for the joint anyway, came to sit next to him. Took a hit, too much too quickly, lungs burning. Coughed painfully into the crook of her arm, eyes watering; wordlessly Alex handed her the glass of water on the sill, cold from the evening air. She accepted it gratefully and drank. Alex looked like shit even by recent standards, now that she was looking - pallid and exhausted. There was a moment’s quiet shuffling to fit them both under the blanket, and when she leaned tentatively against his chest and put her arms around him she could tell he’d lost weight. Not a lot, but some, and it unsettled her. Carefully Eliza handed the joint back and Alex dropped the smoldering roach into the glass, and held her. They fit into each other’s familiar grooves, his chin resting easily on top of her head.

“Missed you,” he said, lightly. Could have just meant today, but - but.

“Missed you, too,” she murmured. Settled down a little more comfortably; she had Alex’s heartbeat thrumming steady in one ear and music playing a little too loudly from his shitty laptop speakers in the other - Duke Ellington, she thought, Count Basie, something like that. They didn’t say anything further and it was all right, for a while.

 

 

*

 

 

 _my wife… i used to tell her when we first started dating how good she was for me. you know those people who are just good? she made me wanna be better, just_ better, _the kind of guy i could be. i couldn’t disappoint a girl who could light up a room like that. who was stubborn enough to find the good in people no matter what - in me most of all. if i wanted to get really self flagellating here i guess i could say i dont know what she saw in me, at first, but i don’t think thats true - i think she felt the same, saw what i could grow into. what i couldn’t have grown into without her._

 

 

*

 

 

Angelica called. This was more than a little surprising; Eliza hadn’t spoken to her in weeks, not so much as a text. She waffled over whether or not to even answer it, but in the end picked up before it could go to voicemail. “Hey, Ange.”

“Liza, thank god.” Angelica sounded so profoundly relieved that Eliza panicked instantly. “I was afraid you weren’t gonna pick up - listen - it’s Daddy.” And she choked up, stopped. Eliza couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Angelica cry.

“What happened?” In her periphery she saw Alex look up. Her own voice sounding far away but calm, preternaturally so. One of them had to be.

Angelica took a deep breath in the second before she spoke, an eternity, and she said, “He had a heart attack. Or - angina, maybe? I don’t even know all the details, fuck, he was going for tests - listen, Peg’s on her way but I’m stuck at work and Church is stuck at work and Mom’s alone, and I just -”

“Okay,” she said. Sat down, took a deep breath of her own. Alex came over, took her hand, the question written all over his face but he was quiet. He looked worried; was she the only one keeping it together? “I’m gonna call Mom and Alex and I are gonna go. You talked to Peg?”

“I did, yeah. She’s a wreck, of course.”

“Right.” She sighed, floundered for the words. “He’s gonna be fine, Ange. He’s tough. It’s gonna be okay.”

“I know,” Angelica said, heavily, didn’t sound at all like she believed it.

“Fuck. Okay, I’m gonna go, I gotta call Mom - we’ll call you the second we know anything, okay? Love you.”

“Love you,” Angelica said, soft, and she was gone.

She reached blindly for Alex and leaned into him. Counted to ten, allowed herself that long to cry, to panic, to be still, that long and no more. Alex was teary-eyed himself when she sat back up.

A few hours and another couple of phone calls later they were in a waiting room at the hospital in Albany in which she and Angelica and Peggy had all been born, all of them quiet, restive, discussing things in hushed tones. Church had made it, hugged them both; no sign of Angelica yet but she was on her way. She had a nagging worry for Alex, who never did well with hospitals - he seemed alright, though. As stressed as the rest of them but no worse (selfishly, she was relieved: she needed him to keep it together, needed him here).

Eliza watched her mother, the quiet composure she herself had inherited. The crumpled tissue in her shaking hand the only sign she was at all affected. She couldn’t help but run away with the thought, picture herself in her mother’s shoes: what if this happened to them, to her and Alex in another thirty years? Alex, mistrustful of doctors as he was, surely would wave off chest pains as nothing to worry about, but - no, this was morbid. Best to put it from her mind.

The door opened and all of them looked up and there she was: Angelica went to their mother first, hugged her fiercely, and then all of them in turn, Eliza last. They separated and just - looked at each other a moment; a beat. “Church,” Alex said, kind of suddenly, “let’s - go find some coffee, yeah? Cat - have you eaten anything?”

“Not since this morning,” her mother admitted, and Alex nodded; he and Church departed promising to return with something remotely edible. Angelica came to sit next to her in one of the row of ugly, uncomfortable chairs and Eliza tried to subtly give her a once-over. It might have just been the glare of fluorescent lights but she looked exhausted, drawn. Up close Eliza could see she’d been crying, her makeup reapplied a little heavily.

When Alex and Church returned it was with paper cups of weak coffee and an armful of vending machine snacks, plastic-wrapped sandwiches, chips and chocolate. “Best we could do,” Church offered, apologetically. Eliza was starving, she realized, hadn’t had much to eat today, either. Angelica tipped over like a felled tree to rest her head on Eliza’s shoulder; wordlessly Eliza offered the box of Reese’s Pieces in her hand. Angelica murmured a thanks and took it.

 

 

*

 

 

“We’re leaving,” she said. Laid her left hand on top of Maria’s and considered them, their wedding bands glinting side by side in the low light. For a second she wasn’t sure Maria had heard, but then Maria shifted, craned a little to look up at her.

“You’re leaving,” she repeated, like she was _just checking._

“My dad’s sick.” Just do it, just tear off the band-aid. “Like, sick sick, it’s his heart, so - Alex and I are going to Albany, I guess.”

“Jesus, Eliza. You might have led with that.” Maria had gone very still. “For how long? Is it -?”

“We’re moving. Getting a place there. We - my mom needs us, and we can both work anywhere, so.” She was fucking choking up, again, had been crying constantly for days now, it felt like. Alex had walked in on her in the kitchen the other morning teary in front of the pan of bacon she’d burnt, gotten distracted and spaced out trying to cook. She hadn’t cried at the hospital, annoying the doctors with questions, looking down at her father small and asleep in an uncomfortable bed - but she’d been absolutely overcome waiting in line for coffee at the train station, started crying out of nowhere in the crowd of other tired, stressed-out travelers. Had caused such a scene that the poor startled teenage cashier had let them go without paying.

“I’m sorry,” Maria said, quietly. Picked at a loose thread on the edge of the sheet. Just that, no bullshit platitudes about prayers or hoping for the best. In that second Eliza appreciated it more than ever; Maria might have been a locked vault a lot of the time but she only ever said what she meant.

“I have something for you,” she said, in the hope of staving off the fresh wave of irrational tears threatening to break. Crossed the room and rooted through her bag to find the envelope, stepped over the tangle of their clothes on the floor and got back into bed. “Here.”

Maria opened it, and just - stared, for a second.

“You were talking about school,” Eliza explained, anxiously and unnecessarily, “so I just thought… that won’t cover all of it, obviously, but if I could help at all -”

“I can’t take this.” She tried to hand it back and when Eliza wouldn’t take it just ended up holding it, determinedly not looking at it.

“Take it, please.” The cold and uncomfortable understanding of just how stupid this was, beginning to creep in. “I want you to have it -”

Maria spoke not quite coldly but clearly, measured, like Eliza was stupid. “I’m not taking this, I don’t want your money.”

“It’s a gift, not a loan,” she clarified, although judging by the look on Maria’s face this was only making things worse. “I don’t need you to pay me back -”

“Well. I appreciate the sentiment,” and her tone was scathing in its calm detachment, “but it’s not necessary.” She rolled out of bed, dressed with her back to Eliza, left the cheque and envelope on the pillow.

The urge to cry bubbled up in her chest again and she didn’t even really know why but she was too tired to fight it; she sniffled loudly enough to make Maria turn. This was ridiculous, here she was naked in a motel bed in the middle of the afternoon and crying, father dying, mother quietly falling apart at the seams, husband she’d barely spoken to in months - it was too much, entirely too much. No more, she thought. Enough now. Took a breath and the storm calmed and Maria just looked at her, waiting. The cheque lying on the pillow, mocking her. “Rip it up if you don’t want it,” she said, finally, “but I’m not taking it back.”

“Are you finished?” Maria said, after a long moment. She didn’t sound angry or even upset, just tired.

It took a moment to unstick her throat. “I guess - yeah. I’m finished.”

 

 

*

 

 

Alex caught her scratching at her ankles, once. “What’s up?” he asked, mildly, wandered over.

“I’ve got a rash, or something,” she said, peering at it. “I don’t know what it is but it’s fucking itchy -”

“Stop scratching, then,” he pointed out, pulled her socked foot into his lap. Ran his fingertips gently over the line of red, itching spots on her ankle, scratched nearly raw, and winced. “That’s bedbugs, babe,” he said, almost apologetically.

Her heart sank. “Seriously?”

“Yup. I’ve had them a couple of times, see that, how they’re lined up? I don’t know what else it would be… you got ‘em anywhere else?”

“No - do you?”

“I dunno, my back’s been kind of itchy - can you check?” He twisted so she could tug down the neck of his t-shirt and there they were, a cluster of spots across the back of his shoulder.

“Yeah, that’s - fuck.” She sighed, tried to fight down yet another wave of irrational tears threatening to spring up at the sight. “What’s the worst-case scenario?”

“Bets, don’t -”

“What is it, Alex?”

“Absolute worst-case? New furniture, clothes, bedding - aw, come on, don’t -” She folded into his lap unthinkingly, stopped trying to hold back the clawing panic, and he caught her like he always had, arms around her waist. “It’s okay,” he murmured into her hair. “With a little luck we caught it early, we’ll call somebody to come take a look, it’ll be fine. It’s okay, baby.” He went on like this, for a time, and she lost the fight, let it go and wept into his chest, harder than she had in weeks. She’d been crying constantly on and off like a wet rag, miserable, but this was an ocean, a flood, a dam broken. Ugly, wracking sobs that hurt coming out. Even his familiar smell was enough to break her in half; she _missed_ him, her reckless and infuriating and fiercely loving husband who’d always clung so tightly to what he feared he’d lose, who’d never had reason to trust the good things in his life to stay. How had she ever forgotten this, how sweet he could be, what it was like to have him to crash into when she needed it? They had gotten together so young that she’d never shaken the feeling from the early days, not quite, of the two of them against the world. She wept for how close she’d come to never getting that back, for how thin they’d both gotten, for her sisters, her parents. For Maria and weeks of radio silence. For her bed so long empty and now crawling because she’d brought bugs home from any number of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels, despite how hard she’d tried to keep things separate, the hard bright lines she’d drawn months and months ago. For herself, too, for how bone-deep tired she was.

Alex held her through it, talking the whole time: not the torrent, the deluge, she might have expected, but just a steady quiet stream of comforting nonsense, an even white-noise murmur. _Breathe, babe, calm down, it’s okay, it’s okay._ Ran one warm hand up and down her back, his wedding band knocking against the bumps of her spine. After an age she got a grip, quieted, and the awful raging waves receded. When she sat up she saw she’d left a wet patch on his shirt, tried ineffectually to wipe at it with her sleeve. “Fuck, sorry,” she muttered, half-laughing, watery and mostly at herself.

“This shirt’s seen worse,” Alex assured her, dragged his thumb gently over her cheek to catch a tear; she caught his wrist and held it there. She kissed him, lightly. His other hand twitched on her back, fingers curling into the fabric of her shirt; he didn’t even know he was doing it, she was sure.

She slept in the guest bedroom that night, or tried to. The bed was smaller and less comfortable than her own, and she knew the crawling sensation around her ankles was phantom but it kept her up anyway; more than once she flipped on the bedside lamp to inspect the sheets, restless and paranoid. They had started packing up this room already, the strange assortment of things that had accumulated here over the years as it turned into a de facto storage space. The closet door stood open, the wardrobe emptied of their winter clothes. Alex hadn’t liked sleeping in here, had claimed once to prefer the study just so he could get some work done if he couldn’t sleep, but she thought she understood, now - the room felt transient, half-finished, an island distanced from the rest of the apartment.

She thought about getting up and trying to get some more packing done if she was just going to be awake, but in the end went out to the living room. Alex was still up, though it was well past two, hunched over his laptop in the half-dark and tugging on the roots of his hair in a trademark gesture of frustration.

“Sorry, too loud?” he asked without looking up, turned his music down to a whisper, although it had been fine.

“Alex -”

“Actually, have you seen my headphones, ‘cause I thought -”

“Alexander,” she said, and that got his attention. “Come to bed.”

He blinked at her; his mouth twitched like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to smile. “Yeah, okay,” he said, “I’ll be there in a minute.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thanks as ever to Lindsay - you're an invaluable critic & cheerleader & this wouldn't exist without you.
> 
> title from the Decemberists' "Make You Better".
> 
> I'm on tumblr at [menschinresidence](www.menschinresidence.tumblr.com), come say hi. (a [playlist for this fic](http://menschinresidence.tumblr.com/post/156289068939/anyway-heres-a-playlist-for-a-sliver-to-call-mine) lives there, if you're into that.)


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